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Gnucash 2.4 Small Business Accounting: Beginner's Guide

4 (1)
Book Image

Gnucash 2.4 Small Business Accounting: Beginner's Guide

4 (1)

Overview of this book

Attention, small business owners! Stop tax-day stress. Stop procrastinating with a shoebox full of receipts. Stop reinventing the wheel with a spreadsheet. Stop making decisions simply on a hunch. Stop wasting money on software that is overkill. Start by downloading GnuCash and getting your accounts in order. Designed to be easy to use, yet powerful and flexible, GnuCash allows you to track bank accounts, income, and expenses. As quick and intuitive to use as a checkbook register, it is based on professional accounting principles to ensure balanced books and accurate reports. You can do it and Gnucash 2.4 Small Business Accounting Beginner's Guide will help you get up and running with maintaining your accounts. Gnucash 2.4 Small Business Accounting Beginner's Guide speaks business language, not accountant-speak, because it is written by a former small business owner. It guides you to use GnuCash from scratch with step-by-step tutorials without jargon, pointing out the gotchas to avoid with lots of tips. It will teach you to work on routine business transactions while migrating transaction data from other applications gradually. You will be able to keep on top of transactions and run reports after reading just three chapters! Beyond Chapter 3, it is up to you how far you want to go. Reconcile with your bank and credit card statements. Charge and pay sales tax. Do invoicing. Track payments due. Set up reminders for bills. Avoid stress at tax time. Print checks. Capture expenses using your mobile phone. Gnucash 2.4 Small Business Accounting Beginner's Guide gives you the power. Know your numbers. Make decisions with confidence. Drive your business to its full potential.

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Gnucash 2.4 Small Business Accounting: Beginner's Guide
Feb, 2011 | 324 pages
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Table of Contents (20 chapters)
Gnucash 2.4 Small Business Accounting
Gnucash 2.4 Small Business Accounting
Credits
Credits
About the Author
About the Author
About the Reviewers
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Preface
Free Chapter
1
Getting Started with GnuCash
Getting Started with GnuCash
Installing GnuCash on Windows
Time for action – installing GnuCash on Windows
But first, a tip to make your life easier with auto-save
Taking the drudgery out of setting up accounts
Time for action – creating the default business accounts
Getting your business accounts done just right
Time for action – fine tuning business accounts
How to impress your accountant
Strengths and limitations of GnuCash
Summary
2
Transactions – the Lifeblood of a Business
Transactions – the Lifeblood of a Business
A quick and easy way to enter simple transactions
Time for action – entering simple transactions quickly and easily
Entering a simple transaction in the account register
Time for action – entering a simple transaction in the account register
Entering a more complex transaction in the account register
Time for action – entering a split transaction in the account register
Anybody can change their mind
Time for action – editing, cancelling, and deleting transactions
A feeling of déjà vu
Time for action – reusing transactions
Summary
3
Fun and Eye-opening Part - Reports and Charts
Fun and Eye-opening Part - Reports and Charts
Viewing standard reports and charts
Time for action – viewing standard reports and charts
Creating a custom report and saving it
Time for action – creating a custom report and saving it
Working with stylesheets
Time for action – working with stylesheets
Exporting reports
Time for action – exporting reports
Summary
4
How not to Get Lost in the Transactions Jungle
How not to Get Lost in the Transactions Jungle
How not to get lost while hiking in the wilderness
Manual reconciliation
Time for action – reconciling with a printed monthly statement
Electronic reconciliation
Time for action – reconciling with a downloaded electronic statement
Credit card reconciliation
Vital point to remember when importing an OFX file
Recovering from wrong selection of account
Time for action – changing the account to import into
Summary
5
Repetitive Work? Let GnuCash do it
Repetitive Work? Let GnuCash do it
Let GnuCash worry about recurring transactions
Time for action – creating a recurring transaction from the register
A stitch in time saves nine
Time for action – triggering scheduled transactions
Tool to create many recurring transactions
Time for action – creating scheduled transactions in bulk
Summary
6
Business Mantra: Buy Now, Pay Later
Business Mantra: Buy Now, Pay Later
Credit is the lubricant for the wheels of business
Billing terms and customers
Time for action – setting up billing terms and adding customers
Invoices and Accounts Receivable
Time for action – keeping track of credit sales
Setting the starting invoice number
Time for action – setting the starting invoice number
Processing payment
Time for action – when the check is on hand
Bills and accounts payable
Time for action – keeping track of credit purchases
Summary
7
Budget: Trip Planner for your Business
Budget: Trip Planner for your Business
Budget
Time for action – creating a budget for your business
Employees and payroll
Time for action – making payroll entries in GnuCash
Depreciation
Time for action – making depreciation entries for assets
Owner's drawing
Time for action – entering owner's draw in your books
Summary
8
Making Tax Times Less Stressful
Making Tax Times Less Stressful
GnuCash currently supports only US business types for income tax
Setting up income tax related accounts
Time for action – mapping GnuCash accounts to tax schedules
Creating income tax schedule report and TXF export
Time for action – getting the numbers for tax returns
Setting up sales tax tables
Time for action – setting up sales tax tables
Applying sales tax to invoices
Time for action – charging sales tax on sales
Summary
9
Printing Checks and Finding Transactions
Printing Checks and Finding Transactions
Finding transactions
Time for action – searching for a transaction
Printing checks
Time for action – printing checks
Numbered accounts
Time for action – assigning numbers to accounts
Financial calculator
Time for action – calculating mortgage payments
Summary
10
Adapting GnuCash for Non-profits and Personalizing
Adapting GnuCash for Non-profits and Personalizing
No separate non-profit version of GnuCash
Bookkeeping for non-profits
Time for action – using GnuCash features for non-profits
Keeping funds for projects separately
Time for action – allocating funds for projects
Getting overall Income Statement
Time for action – getting overall Income Statement
Personalizing GnuCash
Time for action – getting your work environment just right
Protecting your data
Time for action – backing up your data
Summary
11
Data Import/Export: Use your Phone to enter Expenses
Data Import/Export: Use your Phone to enter Expenses
Saving expense data in your smartphone and uploading to your PC
Time for action – using a smartphone to save expense data
Sending data through an expense tracking service
Time for action – using an expense tracking service to get data into GnuCash
Migrating to GnuCash from other accounting software
Time for action – migrating to GnuCash from other software
Exporting data from GnuCash
Time for action – exporting data from GnuCash for migration and other purposes
Summary
12
Application Integration and Other Advanced Topics
Application Integration and Other Advanced Topics
These tutorials assume a certain level of proficiency
Using OpenOffice.org Base to query data
Time for action – using popular office software to query GnuCash data
Using MS Excel to create reports and charts
Time for action – connecting from Excel to create reports and charts
Application integration
Time for action – exporting contact information from GnuCash
Foreign currency transactions
Time for action – invoicing and receiving payment in Canadian dollars
Other handy tips and tricks
Time for action – grouping invoices for each contract separately
Summary
Pop Quiz Answers
Pop Quiz Answers
Answers to Pop quiz
Index
Index

Time for action – installing GnuCash on Windows

Let us go through the steps for downloading and installing GnuCash:

  1. GnuCash is an open source software developed by volunteers, often for their own use, and shared with the community. It can be downloaded for free. Download the latest stable release of the installer for Microsoft Windows XP/Vista/7 from the www.gnucash.org website. The file should have a name like gnucash-2.4.1-setup.exe. The size of the file should be about 90MB. Save the file to a convenient location on your PC, such as the Temp folder in your C drive.

    Note

    The GnuCash website will also have other development versions of the software. These are unstable and are for testing purposes only. These are not suitable for business use. Make sure you download the stable release.

  2. Launch the GnuCash setup program by double-clicking this file in Windows Explorer.

    Note

    Windows security might pop a message like The publisher could not be verified. Are you sure you want to run this software? or Do you want to allow the following program from an unknown publisher to make changes to this computer?. Click Run or Yes to continue.

  3. The language selection dialog will appear with English already selected. Click OK to continue.

  4. The Welcome screen of the GnuCash setup wizard will appear. Close any other application that may be running and click Next.

  5. The License Agreement will appear. Select I accept the agreement and click Next.

  6. The location dialog will show that GnuCash will be installed in C:\Program Files \gnucash. It will also tell you how much free space is required on your hard disk for installing the program (about 350 MB). Make sure you have the required free space and click Next.

    Note

    On Windows 7, the default location will be C:\Program Files (x86)\gnucash.

  7. The next screen will show that a Full Installation will be done. Click Next to continue.

  8. The next screen will show that a GnuCash folder will be created for the menu items. Click Next to continue.

  9. The next screen will show that a desktop icon and a start menu link will be created. Click Next to continue.

  10. The next screen is simply a recap of all the selections made by you so far. Click Install to start the installation. This may take several minutes, giving you time for a coffee break.

  11. When the installation is completed successfully, you should see a window with the title Information. Click Next to continue.

  12. Next, the Completing the GnuCash Setup Wizard window will appear. The Run GnuCash now box will be checked. Click Finish to complete the installation. The GnuCash Tip of the Day will pop up. You can close this.

  13. You should see the Welcome to GnuCash window with Create a new set of accounts checked. We are going to do that soon. But for now, click Cancel.

  14. Say No to the Display Welcome Dialog Again? question. You should see the Unsaved book – GnuCash window:

What just happened?

Congratulations! You have just installed GnuCash successfully and you are ready to start learning, hands-on, how to use it.

Other operating systems

In addition to Windows, GnuCash runs on Mac OS X (on the newer Intel as well as the older Power PC) and several flavors of Linux. If you have one of those operating systems, you can download the install package and get installation instructions for those operating systems from the GnuCash.org website.

Other download locations

In addition to the GnuCash.org website, you can also download GnuCash from popular open source repositories such as SourceForge. Wherever you download from, be careful that you are downloading from a genuine site and that the download is free of viruses and malware.

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